The Best Plays

These are the plays which in the light of metropolitan criticism seem most important:

AREN'T WE ALL?--Cyril Maude and a group of highly polished London players demonstrate that Broadway has much to learn from Piccadilly in the matter of deft drawing-room comedy. The most amusing show in town.

CHILDREN OF THE MOON--Reviewed in this issue.

THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE--A play of the American Revolution by George Bernard Shaw. For two acts he writes as though George M. Cohan were at his very elbow. Then he settles down to satire, and laughter supplants the thunder of the melodrummer.

IN LOVE WITH LOVE--Mid the choppy seas of comedy blown up by three males contesting for her favor, Lynn Fontanne moves serenely to her nuptial destination. Hers is quite the best individual performance of the early season.

MERTON OF THE MOVIES--Like "Babbitt" and "Main Street," " Merton " has imbedded itself in the American vocabulary. He is the satiric symbol for youth with the celluloid complex.

POLLY PREFERRED--A cunningly contrived trifle on movie stars in the making. Genevieve Tobin is exhibit A.

RAIN--Jeanne Eagels still displaying sex at close range among the South Sea Islands. She discloses conditions under which a harlot and a divine may change places.

SEVENTH HEAVEN--An unimportant bit of dramatic fustian effectively embroidered with French atmosphere in war time. Helen Menken lashes the audience's breath away with a blacksnake whip in the second-act climax.

SUN UP--A primitive tragedy of the Carolina Mountains where reading and writing are viewed with native alarm. Particularly worth while is the performance of Lucile La Verme, who smokes a corn cob pipe as though she likes it.

TWEEDLES--Are you a tweedle? In other words, do you consider your family tree one of a strictly limited number of giant Sequoias? If you do, Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson are out for you with a satiric axe in this most engaging comedy.

Among metropolitan musical comedies the following are most hospitable to the weary eye and ear: Ziegfeld Follies, Scandals, Wildflower, Helen of Troy, N. Y., Little Jessie James.